Showing posts with label sterling silver. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sterling silver. Show all posts

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Earrings: Neglected But Necessary

There are a couple of things that I will not leave my house without; one of them is lipstick, and the other is a pair of earrings. However, while I am always wearing a bracelet, I feel totally naked without earrings. When it comes to making jewelry though, I have to force myself to remember to make earrings! Funny, when I love to wear them so much!
I love to design and make bracelets as much as I love to wear them; I also like to do necklaces although I do not make as many as I do bracelets. But when it comes to earrings. . . maybe it's because I see them as necessary rather than something "special". I've been working on them lately though!
The first pair of earrings are made with genuine rubies and 14 karat goldfilled accents. I really like these ruby earrings quite a bit. The next pair are amethyst earrings made with Karen Hill Tribes sterling silver and the neatest posts with a cabochon amethyst bezel-set in the middle. The faceted nuggets make these earrings special because they have a lush and lavish look. They are a pretty dark purple colour, but not so purple that they look black. The amethyst earrings below feature the circle look that is so in style. The gemstones here are amethysts also, and the earwires have a cabochon amethyst set in them.
The last earrings are amazonite earrings created with some great amazonite that I recently received. It is the lovely light teal blue colour that very good amazonite is and fairly even throughout. I can't wait to make a bracelet with some of it!


Friday, May 04, 2007

Emeralds: The May Birthstone




Emeralds are the May birthstone - which means that the emerald is my birthstone. I really love emeralds, and I would create with them all the time if they weren't so expensive. Emeralds are quite difficult to get in bead form (ones that are affordable and still look good that is), but sometimes I get lucky. My dream is to have huge emeralds to create with, but I don't know that it will come true anytime soon.Emerald is considered to be one of the "Big Four" gemstones (the others are diamond, sapphire, and ruby). It has a hardness of 7.5 to 8 on the Moh's scale. Today the best emeralds come from Columbia although emeralds are found in Australia, the United States, and Africa (Zimbabwe, most are small emeralds but of high quality). At one time, emeralds were mined in Austria and also Russia. There are emeralds in India that have been found recently (Rajasthan) but most are lower quality and made in to beads. However, the emerald has been popular in India since ancient times although no one is really sure where they came from.

The emerald is a beryl, that is, it belongs to a group of gemstones, including aquamarine, that are known as beryls.
All the bracelets shown here can be found on our Emerald Bracelets page on the Cluny Grey Jewelry website.

The earrings above can be found at Cluny Grey's Emerald Earrings page.